We were going to Suzhou by train on Thursday night so we spent the morning repacking and headed out again. Shining girl had spotted another market that looked interesting so we left our luggage with the Hostel staff and took another cab. It looked new, and had a higher standard of goods than Xiushui but I didn’t note the name down. It’s near the Workers’ Stadium. At the top there were beauty services and SG decided she could afford to have gel nails added to her fingers. I noticed they also did massage so I sat in the next chair and had a lovely time with a strong Chinese woman who massaged my neck, back and hands.
The train was clean and comfortable and smoking was not allowed so we had a restful overnight trip to Suzhou. I had rung the Suzhou International Youth Hostel and booked a room with two beds and bathroom so we took a cab there, hailing one to avoid the inflated prices in the rank by the station. The girl on reception seemed hardly out of High School and her English was extremely limited. She had no knowledge of our booking and I asked for one room, two beds and w.c. I began to have doubts when she handed us two keys and charged less than I expected but when I tried English and Chinese she assured me it was ok. We took the lift to the fourth floor and climbed to the fifth where we found adjoining rooms, hoping there would be a door between the two. When we opened the doors we found six-person bunk rooms.
I told SG to wait with the bags while I returned to reception to try to sort it all out. Another staff member was at Reception too but neither was competent to deal with foreign customers. Finally another guest offered to help, a woman who works for Bosch China and was in Suzhou for training. She interpreted my request in Chinese (she was Chinese) and the still puzzled looking young thing pointed to a noticeboard where there were five room options including one that said in English, ‘private room, two beds, w.c. (w.c.? This is a term most Westerners don’t use but every Chinese student of English uses it. Where did it come into the curriculum from? Do you use it?)’ and asked which one I wanted. Of course I told her yet again and she asked me to pay the additional money to ‘change’. Then she discovered the note about my original booking and apologized! One of the marvellous things about China is that there is always someone nearby who has a reasonable command of English and is really happy to help.
I went upstairs and collected my daughter then descended two floors to our room. In the room was a Visitor’s Guide which set out the Hostel’s services in an attempt at English which was as completely unintelligible an example of Chinglish as I have yet come across. What was most amusing was their way of discouraging patrons from stealing stuff from the room. They had a price list for everything from the face washer to the television set!
Our experience of Suzhou was that it is not very foreigner-friendly. It is a popular destination for Chinese and less well-known to foreign visitors. We found almost no one who spoke any English. It didn’t matter, except at the Hostel. I got along ok with my smattering of Putonghua and the Guide book and a good local map with English.
Suzhou is ruled by the bicycle. China as a whole takes, ‘I Did it My Way’ as its theme song for road users but the cyclists of Suzhou ride as if they are super villains in an Anime cartoon. They have one purpose, to get to their destination, and they will stop for nothing or no-one. I watched one young lady on an electric bike shoot across the path of our taxi with inches to spare looking neither right nor left as though she were catatonic. Her course was then parallel to ours for a time and I followed her with appalled eyes as she ignored every rule of law and courtesy and every vehicle and pedestrian, never shifting her gaze from the few meters directly in front of her electric bike, daring the Heavens to send something capable of stopping her. Soon after I came to China a pupil asked me the strange question, ‘Do you believe in the magical powers of the Chinese people?’ I was already able to reply to that. I said, ‘Yes. Every time I go in a car in China I believe in the magical powers of the Chinese people. They are the only thing that prevents accidents.’
We went to eat at a dumpling restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet and walked along to a market area which filled the precincts of a Confucian Temple.